Hull Photos: 22/6/17-28/6/17

Another week of posts – still catching up.

22nd June 2017

Another view looking down Queen’s Terrace towards Tunis St, eight months after my previous picture, shows more properties sealed with corrugated iron awaiting demolition and a dramatic increase in the amount of graffiti on the gable end. The wicket is still there, but clearly the paint spray has arrived in Hull.

Most of the property between Sculcoates Lane and Tunis St was demolished shortly after I took this picture, though the houses across the end on Tunis St remain.

I’m disappointed that I missed the siege of Wyndham Street, one of the more colourful events in Hull’s recent history. As this and another picture shows, I was there just a few months before it began, photographing these US military vehicles of the Northern Allied-Axis Society in the street and Melbourne Terrace. Had I known what was about to happen I would have taken more than the three pictures I did.

Barry Nuttall was a 38 year-old who lived in Melbourne Terrace with a wife and 7 kids and his passion was military re-enactment, using old US Army vehicles and uniforms and giving displays that raised thousands for local charities. He was the self-proclaimed Major General and had an army of around a dozen officers and men (at least one of whom was a woman.)

When the council decided to carry out a comprehensive redevelopment of the whole Argyle St area in 1979 the residents set up a campaign for refurbishment rather than demolition, but unfortunately the council wasn’t ready to listen. Eventually everyone moved out except Nuttall, who decided the compensation they were offering to home owners wasn’t enough and refused to move. There were stand-offs with police and bailiffs against his army defending his property making use of their military equipment and uniforms, which drew in reporters from the nationals and made headlines.

The battle dragged on for a month, but eventually the council were able to enforce a compulsory purchase order and sent in the bulldozers, but that wasn’t the end of Nuttall’s fight. He and his supporters used the rubble they left to build a fort, which they defended for the next three years, with huge support from the community who brought in supplies.

Eventually the police responded with a siege, refusing to let in supplies or to allow anyone who left the site – where there was no gas, water or electricity – back in, but resistance and support continued and it was three years before Nuttall finally quit in 1986. During those three years he was said to have only left the site twice, once to take a petition to Parliament in London and the second to marry his second wife – when Hull singing star Joe Longthorne lent him his Cadillac for the occasion.

I have to admit that I took this one mainly for its name, Marshall St. It’s a fairly ordinary street off west from Newland Avenue next to the old primary school, now converted into flats, built in 1896 for the Hull School Board (with a larger senior school behind added in 1900) shortly after these streets just south of the railway bridge. The development was in land left after the Hull & Barnsley railway was completed in 1885.

The school creates a slightly unusual road pattern for Hull, with a road on each side of it – this and Reynoldson St – running parallel well past the end of the school site and then sweeping around to meet in the middle, with Reynoldson St then continuing straight on to make the shape of the streets like a tuning fork (a two-pronged fork). The street ended at the Cottingham drain and is still a cul-de-sac for cars, though on foot you can walk along the now-culverted drain (Jack Kaye Walk) to either Ella St or under the Hull & Barnsley line to Goddard Ave. There are no ‘terraces’ off the two ‘prongs’ of the fork, while the ‘handle’ has six to the north and four to the south.

When I last looked, this corner was still very much as it is in this picture, except there are now rather more vehicles parked most of the time.

34i56: Marshall St, 1983 – Springbank

25th June 2017

Another picture of the site where Major General Barry Nuttall made his stand against demolition of his home together with his colleagues in a few months after I took this picture, resisting demolition for a month, then building a fortress from the rubble and defending it against a police siege for three years. See my previous post for more detail.

Unfortunately I didn’t go this way again for some years, perhaps because most of the area was a giant building site. I think that the Hull Daily Mail had stopped reporting it by the time I was next in Hull.

Somewhere in my wanderings between Freehold St and Cranborne St, off to the north of Springbank I came across this terrace with a rather curious entrance, what looks rather like a rustic aviary.

Much of the area was then laid out with streets with slightly larger houses than many in Hull and without terraces. More or less the only ones that remain are on Mayfield St, but none seem to look like this one – even without the structure across the front.

It seems to be a double terrace, with four houses on each side and then a wall separating it from a similar terrace from the next street. The houses look in decent condition and are all occupied. Perhaps someone who lived in the area in 1983 will recognise it.34j25: Terrace, Springbank area, 1983 – Springbank

27th June 2017

The Kenfig, a grab hopper dredger built in 1954 by Henry Scarr Ltd of Hessle for the British Transport Docks Board at Port Talbot. It was one of the dredgers used to clear the passage into Humber Dock for the Marina, and in 1983 was bought by Jones & Bailey Contractors Ltd of Hull who renamed her Hedon Sand in 1984. Around 5 years later she was scrapped at New Holland.

Kenfig was moored just a little upstream of Drypool Bridge on the River Hull for most of the 1980s, seldom if ever moving.

35y14: Kenfig above Drypool Bridge, River Hull, 1983 – River Hull

28th June 2017

Some of my contact sheets of films taken back in the 80s present a number of mysteries, and this was one of them. There are 35 pictures from a single film in six strips of six (with one blank) on the contact sheet in the order in which they were taken, and helpfully I’ve added brief locations to some of them – normally indicating when I’ve moved to a different street or place. The first five pictures in Hull are followed by a single image of the Ropery at Barton upon Humber and the remainder of the film was taken in Hull.

The next nine pictures are of sites I photographed on other occasions and know the exact location, but then come three of a pattern of windows etc on a wall which I labelled ‘Off Hedon Rd’ but almost certainly I had confused with that other H, Holderness Rd. Where I took the next two, one of which shows a gate into a large and fairly empty industrial yard with a sign on it pointing to ‘Beach and Cliff Walk’ is anyone’s guess, though it must have been someone’s idea of a joke.

The next frame is looking upstream along the River Hull from Sculcoates Bridge and is followed by today’s picture labelled Wincolmlee and then several labelled Stepney Lane.

From this, I guessed that this picture was made on Wincolmlee somewhere between Chapman St and Fountain Rd, but when I walked along there a few months ago it was nowhere to be seen. Google Streetview on this road goes back to July 2008, and taking a virtual walk then the facade, though much altered, leapt out at me.

The blocked doorway now had a door in it, smaller and blue and wooden, and a ventilator had been added in the wall to its left, but it was clearly the same – and in 2008 had a large notice ‘Barker & Patterson Fabricators – Mild – Stainless Steel & Aluminium – Structural Steelwork & Engineering Services, along with another from Scots property company announcing the c.5,900 sq ft site was now for sale due to relocation – and a quick Google found B&P now in nearby Oxford St.

In 2017 it is now Fox Precision Engineering Ltd, and looking rather different to the old facade shown here, which has been completely cladded. Had I stepped back across the road for an image showing the building as a whole it would however have still been recognisable. The site extends to York St which Fox list as their address. This building had also been Barker & Paterson’s ‘back door’.

There remains the mystery of a name on the blocked letterbox in this picture. Looking at the full size image I can see parts of the letters ‘EDWAR’ at its start, probably ‘Edward’ or ‘Edwards’. It would be interesting to know what this building, with its rather grand doorway whose remains attracted my interest was originally built as, but I can tell you no more. It was a surface that seemed to tell a story but one I’m still unable to reveal. And perhaps it’s better that way.

Streetview, usually unreliable on such things, tells me the address is 297 Wincolmlee.

35y35: Frontage around 297 Wincolmlee, 1983 – River Hull

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